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Kaufman awarded Bethel College Thresher Award in Mathematics

September 11th, 2017

NORTH NEWTON, KAN. -Bethel College senior Amy Kaufman, a mathematical sciences major from Marion, S.D., received the Thresher Award in Mathematics during the college's annual Awards Convocation May 12. The convocation, held at the end of each spring semester, recognizes academic excellence.

The Thresher Award is given to graduating seniors for outstanding and sustained contribution in performance areas, for outstanding creative achievement in the applied sciences, or for completion of an outstanding and substantial academic project.

Kaufman received the award for her work on her undergraduate research project, "The Piano Mover's Problem: Variations on a Theme." Her talk on the topic earned her first prize among the undergraduate talks presented at the Kansas Section of the Mathematical Association of America meeting earlier this year.

"Amy was successful in creating new shapes that provided excellent ways to deal with the two variations she considered, and she ingeniously integrated ideas from geometry and other areas of mathematics as well as mathematical software to precisely describe their boundaries and to calculate their areas," said her project advisor, Richard Rempel, professor of mathematics at Bethel College.

Kaufman was one of seven graduating seniors to receive Thresher Awards this year.

About Bethel

As the first Mennonite college founded in North America, Bethel College celebrates a tradition of progressive Christian liberal arts education, diversity within community, and lifelong learning.